


he stops to think, he starts to cry

by maplemood



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, a hint of future redemption, background monster hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 11:24:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13500792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: (oh why?)“If I leave him alone he’ll probably die. Okay?”





	he stops to think, he starts to cry

It’s a Monday morning in July, clear, bright, and white-hot—the best of what’s called high summer in basement-dwelling, sword-and-sorcery nerd speak—when Steve Harrington decides to hang up the bat for good.

He’s seen monsters the size of men and men no better than monsters. He’s seen a cat torn into and chewed on till it was turned practically inside-out. He’s seen Max Mayfield ripping donuts through an abandoned parking lot. Steve, in short, has seen some shit.

The day he sees Billy fucking Hargrove sprawled across his backseat is the day he’s seen everything.

In which case: whoo boy. Looks like everything is here.

…

Max insisted.

“He won’t make a noise,” she said.

“I swear,” she said.

“He’s totally doped up on Benadryl,” she said.

When Steve inquired—politely—why the hell she suddenly needed to drag a doped to the gills asshole along on their hunting trip (he’d already grabbed more than enough bait), Max set her jaw, like the whole weight of the world sat clenched between her teeth, and snarled.

“If I leave him alone he’ll probably die. Okay?”

…

She oversold the dying part, Steve thinks, hauling a burlap-wrapped corpse out of his trunk.

Screw it.

Hargrove’s no picture.

“Hey.” He breathes through his mouth; the corpse is dripping black blood and smells about as good as you’d expect a corpse dripping black blood to smell. “Last I checked Benadryl doesn’t work on broken noses.”

“Oh, wow.” Max rolls her eyes. She’s got a shovel slung over each shoulder and a jaw still set tight enough to crack. “I never thought of that! Thanks so much, Dr. Steve!”

They’ve already driven a good way off-road; Steve tests the ground a few feet away from the car with one foot. Seems soft enough. He dumps the black-bleeding _thing_ to the ground.

“Give me that.”

Max passes over the bigger shovel. Then uses her free hand, covered with a tattered, blood-spattered sleeve, to scrub under her eyes. She’s been messing with them all day, rubbing, blinking. Steve hasn’t mentioned it.

“It doesn’t work on cracked ribs, either,” she says as he sinks the blade into the ground. No joke there—Max is as pissed-off and bitter as he’s ever heard her. “I just gave him a ton because it puts him to sleep.”

Steve works the ground a minute, fingers gripped around the shovel’s handle, knuckles painful knobs. What is he supposed to say, because, shit, they’ve been over this. Ten times. A hundred times. Still the kid refuses to bring any of it up to Hopper. Her stubbornness has got Steve seeing red on pretty much a daily basis; he’d beat her ass if he didn’t know she’s seeing plenty of that at home. He’d call it in himself if there was any way, short of Max or Billy spilling, to prove what’s been going on behind closed doors. There isn’t. Steve’s only had the pleasure of coming up against Neil Hargrove a handful of times, enough to know he wouldn’t care _who_ made the call.

He stops, takes a breath. “You want to talk about it?”

It’s all he can do.

Max leans against her shovel. The afternoon sun burns her nose and catches each strand of gold in her red hair. “No.”

Steve goes back to digging.

“How about you drag it on over,” he says a half-hour or so later. Max is rolling the corpse over the edge of the grave when they hear groaning.

It’s coming from the car, at least. There’s one bad moment where they both jump, arms snagging for each other, wondering if the corpse is as much of a corpse as they thought. Not like the alternative is any better, though.

“Fuck,” Max seethes, wiping her hands across her jeans. Another swipe at her eyes. “The Benadryl must’ve worn off.” And she damn near sprints for the car.

They left the doors open and the windows rolled down. Turns out they should have stuck with just the windows—Hargrove’s trying to get out. Jackass lolls half-out the backseat driver’s side, his face puffed up like some purple and green pastry. The drawstrings of his sweatshirt (no leather jackets or unbuttoned button-ups this time) trail along the ground.

“Billy!” Max yells. “Stop it!”

More groans. She tries grabbing his shoulders right as he tries shoving her away. His flailing arm nearly catches Max across the face.

Steve grabs the back of her T-shirt. “I’ll do it!”

She twists in his grip, furious. “I don’t need help!”

“Fucking _clearly_!” He gets her out of the way, crouches down, and grabs for the back of Hargrove’s neck. The guy’s an ox, even half-delirious. Steve’s never going to beat him hand-to-hand.

But he’s fought a couple more monsters since they last met, and run out of shits to give along the way.

“Hey, dickhead,” Steve snaps, as close to the idiot’s ear as he can get. “We’re trying to help you.”

Slowly, out of the depths of his swollen face, eyes blink open, and alert. “Harrington?” It’s all he gets out before the haze closes in again. The same eyes go fuzzy; liquid, blurred, and immeasurably tired in the space of a second.

“Yeah, yeah. Keep it in your pants.” Steve has to loop an arm around his waist to get him back in the car and laid out across the seat. Hargrove tries struggling once; Steve flicks the side of his head and he stops.

“Man, look at this,” he mutters, reaching for the ratty sheet Max tossed over Hargrove before they started out. Now it’s balled up on the floor. “You don’t deserve her.”

The guy lets out another groan. Steve wonders about all pressure he just put on those cracked ribs, then cuts the thought off as fast as he can. He shakes the blanket out anyway.

“Look at you.”

They’re other things he could say. _Not so hot being on the other end, huh? Some asshole’s punching bag?_ Stuff Hargrove knows already, from long before he ever rolled into Hawkins.

Steve spreads the sheet over him. He doesn’t tug the corners down where they don’t quite cover his bare feet—even Hargrove’s toes are messed up, the nails bruised like somebody stomped on them. He’s not a nurse.

 _Look at you._ Let the words fall, let them stay. They’re all he needs to say. Steve ducks out. He stretches up to a sky beginning to flush with a hint of purple. The air’s starting to cool, too, too quickly for summer (a normal summer—seasons in Hawkins have all but given up behaving normally, like everything else). It’s probably a good thing that Max thought of the sheet.

She’s standing by the hood of the car, one hand cupped behind her neck, eyes daring Steve to ask any more questions. Luckily, he has only one.

“Got any more Benadryl?”

“Nope.” Max shakes her head. “Let’s just bury the thing and get out of here.”

…

He dozes till they’re back on the road. Maybe five miles outside Hawkins proper Hargrove snorts, groans, and comes awake with a slow, lumbering shake that reminds Steve of nothing so much as the two humongous horses (Clydesdales?) his great uncle used to keep on his farm.

Steve squeezes his knuckles white over the steering wheel. Glances over to see Max doing the same to her handrests.

“Faster,” she’s snapped every time the speedometer flicked below forty. If they were hoping to outrace the storm, though, looks like they’re fresh out of luck.

The words start heavy and lumbering like the rest of him, slopping spit and God knows what else. A jumble, so far as Steve can make out. Whacked-out, neither-rhyme-nor-reason bullshit, and he’s happy to keep it that way, happy to keep cruising the backroads at a brisk twenty miles an hour, since he’s started to worry Hargrove will try making break for it, and left-side passenger door doesn’t lock...but the jumble grows louder and louder.

“Pull over,” Max says, very calmly.

“No way.” Steve almost misses a turn. “All right, I’m getting you two idiots home. That’s it.”

“Steve.” She reaches for his arm. “Pull over.”

Only when he motors into the grass and Max unbuckles does the jumble start making sense to Steve.

Hargrove’s moaning her name.

She starts clambering between the seats; he snags at her shirt again.  

“Whoa, whoa. Get back here.”

“He won’t hurt me,” Max says. Steve cocks his head, laying his best _you-shitting-me_ look on her. Max returns it down to the cocked head.

“Seriously, doofus, he’s still so—” she spins a finger by her temple, “—I can beat his face in if he tries anything.”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “What’s left to beat?”

She rolls her eyes and shoves his head away. Steve unbuckles, groping for the door handle—you never know, though truthfully Hargrove looks too out of it to do any real damage.

“Max,” he keeps saying. “Max.” He props himself up, crumbles down. She somehow maneuvers her way into the leftmost seat, face suddenly impassive.

“I’m here, Billy.”

“Piece of shit,” Hargrove mutters. “Piece of shit, you’re such a piece of shit—”

Steve rakes a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to take this,” he says.

“—piece of shit, _Max_.”

“I’m here,” she repeats.

There’s a wet, blubbering sound. Steve does a one-eighty in his seat. Asshole move, but he hardly believes his ears.

He’s crying.

“It’s okay,” Max mumbles.

Hargrove is crying.

“Goddamn shithead. You goddamn little bitch.”

“Billy.” She catches his face between her hands. His tears trickle over Max’s fingers. “It’s okay.”

“S’not. Goddamn—”

Steve isn’t sure what happens to his gut, a knot or a freefall or something else, some sort of shock he’s never felt before and can’t categorize, as Max guides her stepbrother’s head down to rest in her lap.

“Goddammit,” Hargrove says. The beating’s sure sapped his way with words. He turns his head away from her, towards Steve (his eyes are fogged up again; Steve doubts he really sees either of them) and begins to sob.

…

“He took it for me.”

They sit where they are, windows cracked to the purpling evening.

A couple minutes of full-on bawling, from the gut, left Hargrove groaning to himself, sinking into sleep. Max runs her fingers through the mess of his sweat-dark hair, absently, like the movement’s grown automatic. She looks straight ahead. Not at Steve.

“My grandma needs to get these hospital tests done, so Mom’s with her in California. She’s not coming back till Saturday.”

Hargrove shifts. Steve knows he’ll probably hate himself for this soon enough, but, hell, the guy looks so damn pathetic. He reaches over to pat at his leg.

“Settle down,” Steve murmurs. Then he turns his eyes back to Max. “Dickhead Neil was just looking for an excuse, huh?”

She snorts, laughs weakly. Lucas was the one who coined the name. “Yep.” She stops. Starts. “It was just a stupid dent.”

He waits.

“Billy got between us,” Max says. “And they just went at each other...it was bad. Steve, it was really bad.” She touches her thumb to the swell of her stepbrother’s cheek. “He told me to get out—he was yelling it—then Neil punched him and he just went down. He couldn’t get up and Neil kept—he kept—”

Max finally tears her face away from the window. It’s dead-white, sickly under her sunburn, her eyes gleaming wet, raging.

“He’s still an asshole,” she says. “But he tried.”

And Steve says, “I get it, Max.

“I get it.”

…

Once they’re cruising down Main Street, past Melvald’s—he thinks he spots Mrs. Byers’ frazzled little figure behind the counter and almost swerves into a parking space then and there; she’d know what to do, he has no fucking idea what to do—Steve asks, “Is he still at the house?”

Max shakes her head. “I don’t know where he is,” she says. “I hope it’s in a ditch.”

“You and me both.” He doesn’t make the turn to head down Old Cherry Road.

The only thing Max says when he pulls into his driveway is, “Your parents aren’t home?”

“Indianapolis.” Steve switches off the ignition. “Come on. Let’s get this asshole inside.”

Hauling around the bleeding corpse was infinitely easier. In the first place because it was dead, and therefore not so friggin’ _mobile_ , and in the second place because Steve feels like some dumbass rabbit dragging the fox straight to his den. Or something. Fuck foxes—Hargrove’s heavy as a bear.

“His other side, Max—Jesus, man, on your feet!”

Inside they dump him on the couch. At this point he seems awake enough to realize Steve’s the one manhandling him (Max is searching the cupboards for painkillers), if not awake enough to actually get what the hell’s going on. Hargrove pokes him in the gut as Steve jams a couch cushion under his head.

“King Steve. What happened here?”

His face might be too banged-up to allow a real smirk, but it simmers in his voice, thick as the bruises.

“No more basketball practice,” Steve says shortly. He’s been saying he’ll take up running, or swimming; actual swimming, breaststrokes and shit. The kids just smile encouragingly; one of them usually chimes in with a bright, “Sure, Chunky Steve!”

Well. As nicknames go, it’s not the _worst_.

“Huh. Calorie-counting must be a bitch.” Hargrove hitches in a painful breath. “Where’s the kid?”

A cut at the corner of his mouth looks like it’s split open for at least the tenth time.

“She’s okay, man,” Steve says, not so much pissed as hopelessly confused, now that he realizes he cares about the cut at the corner of Hargrove’s mouth and the bruises swelling his face unrecognizable. Why did he give him a cushion, anyway? He’s not a nurse. “She’s safe.”

“Safe as long as she stays here.” Hargrove laughs. It makes a wet little sputter. Pitiful. His eyelids flutter closed. “Jesus, Harrington. You’re such a fucking joke.”

Steve stands over him, still, for a long minute. Hands in his pockets, he listens to Hargrove’s breathing easing off into a light, regular rhythm. Finally, he kicks the foot of the couch. Not hard enough.

“Sweet dreams, asshole.”

…

Max showers in Steve’s bathroom and comes down draped in one of his mom’s plaid nightgowns. They make omelets, get impatient, and chow them down with the centers still too soft. After she checks on Hargrove, who’s snoring like a pig in the mud, they head outside. Max drops onto one of the lounge chairs by the pool. Steve sits beside her.

“So,” he says. “What’re we going to do about this?”

She look his way, ghostly in the lights cast off the water. “I don’t know.”

Steve sighs. “Well, we better start thinking.” He circles one arm around her shoulders, remembering Hargrove’s broken face, the broken sounds he made in the backseat. He remembers Max herself, eyes wet, shaking.

_He tried._

“This can’t keep happening,” she says.

Steve squeezes her shoulders.

“Look,” he says. God, he wishes there was a grown up around. Mrs. Wheeler, Mrs. Byers, even his mom or dad. They’d know what to do. Him and Max and Billy, they’re all just stupid, scared kids. They’ve got no clue. “Hop, Joyce, the Party—they’ll stand by you, okay?”

Max runs a fingernail over the rubber lattice. “What about you?”

Steve rubs his free hand through his hair. “Uh,” he says. “I mean, I figured you knew that was a given, but yeah.”

“Yeah?”

Steve pulls her in, presses his lips to her damp hair for a second. “Yeah, dipshit, yeah.”

She laughs. He laughs. Not much, but it helps.

They stay outside a little longer, staring into the night, across the water.  

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to feel about Billy. But luckily Max and Steve don't, either. 
> 
> Title cribbed (and slightly modified) from lyrics in "I Will Follow" by U2, one of my all-time favorite songs.


End file.
